men women and chainsaws gender in the modern horror film

I grew up a tomboy, surrounded by brothers, stepbrothers, and brothers’ friends. Carol Clover, Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film (1992) How did you even get into this? I thought that by looking at the way horror film thematizes the act of making and creating, I could get at the question of whether horror is the most self-reflexive of genres.Ī strong prima facie case could be made for horror’s being…the most self-reflexive of cinematic genres. While Clover looks at the prevalence of eyes in horror, I took a data-driven approach. While there is a lot that I wanted to do, I ended up limiting the project very specifically to looking at proportions of films that are and are not horror, as coded by crowd-sourcing in IMDb, in relation to the use of words that are associated with acts of creative expression or making. But also, working with a lot of IMDb data, and learning cool things about Python, R, Tableau, Illustrator, Gephi, and horror film.įor the past three months or so, I’ve been pulling together a passion project of mine–seeking a way to prove Carol Clover’s statement in Men, Women, and Chainsaws that “ strong prima facie case could be made for horror’s being…the most self-reflexive of cinematic genres” (168). But the end is in sight! What have I been up to?īasically, tearing my hair out. One of the earliest final girls in horror cinema, Carpenter and Curtis popularized the trope in the slasher film cycle, proving that the bogeyman can be beat-and that a woman is the right one for the job.I’ve been pretty silent on this space for a while now, because all my time has been consumed with finishing my degree project for MICA’s Data Analytics and Visualization program. A knitting needle, clothes hanger, and Myers own knife become her only defense against the silent foe (she’s also severely wounded during the fight). She’s also the first to notice the killer’s presence well before the attacks against her friends.

She is the babysitter turned heroine who springs into action when she realizes she is the killer’s next target. In John Carpenter’s Halloween, Curtis skillfully balances Laurie’s final girl traits (anxiety regarding men, bookishness, bravery) with a vulnerability that audiences could relate to. If you thought Adrienne King’s Alice had it tough in Friday the 13th, making a judgment call for her survival by slaying an old woman, then imagine the internal dialogue in Laurie Strode’s (Jamie Lee Curtis) head during her battles with mute madman Michael Myers-who is essentially a child in an adult’s body.

Men women and chainsaws gender in the modern horror film